


Pale Runs the Ghost

by yourinsomnia



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fog, Gen, Victorian gloom, not quite a crossover, not really just whiskey, whiskey and cigarettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourinsomnia/pseuds/yourinsomnia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edith and Alan return to Crimson Peak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pale Runs the Ghost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackbird/gifts).



> Dear blackbird,
> 
> I think it's so cool that we both love Only Lovers Left Alive and Crimson Peak. I hope you enjoy this. Happy holidays. ♥

“Are we really doing this?” Alan’s voice, carried away by a gust of bitter wind, was barely audible.

“Yes,” Edith replied, not looking at him, her determination concentrated in the white knuckles of her hand clutching at the door knob. She allowed herself just one deep breath and then she pushed the old doors. They opened with a reluctant groan.

Inside, everything was exactly as she remembered. The smell of rot and dust, the fluttering snow and debris piling in the center, the silence more absolute than the night sky on a windless night, the sense of wrongness indistinguishable from the tranquility that pervades realms where humans were no longer welcome.

Yes, everything was the same except the blood on the floor. Paler than the crimson clay oozing at the edges, it has seeped into wood like centuries old paint.

She could feel Alan hovering behind her, his discomfort almost palpable. It was his blood on the floor too.

 _He will get used to this house_ , she thought. _I almost did, after all._

***

Edith made them dinner from the provisions they brought. She'd packed her own dinnerware as well because she didn’t trust anything that belonged to the house not to poison them further.

The wind rattled the windows in the dining room as they ate. It was as though the very foundation of the house was shifting and heaving under the weight of the rotting construction and any moment now, the house was going to throw off its confines and then simply walk away.

“Charming,” Alan remarked. The candlelight gave his naturally bright skin a sickly tinge. He was exhausted by the journey they had to complete to Crimson Peak through muddy April roads.

“You hate it here,” Edith said, knowing it was obvious, and an obvious thing to say, but not knowing what else to say.

Edith found that, of late, she had trouble communicating with people. Especially with Alan, who’d been so kind to her. He’d risked his life for her and then he came back with her though she implored not him not to do so, insisting until she was breathless that she would be fine on her own, that there was nothing to harm her anymore. But Alan remained obstinate in his conviction to accompany her.

“It’s not that I hate it here,” Alan replied to Edith. “Which I do, I won't lie. It’s more like I’m mystified as to why you don’t hate it here. At least not enough to actually stay away from it.”

Of course Alan didn’t understand. Edith didn’t exactly understand herself. It’s not that she really wanted to be here. She tried selling the house but as she had anticipated, they weren’t many interested parties. She was left with a choice—she could either abandon it and return to America with Alan, forever indebted to him, and don her mourning garb as she donned her new title of a widow, with contempt and enmity, for the very idea of re-joining polite society under the guise of normalcy infuriated her.

Or she could return to Crimson Peak, her only tether, and claim what had rightfully become hers.

She chose the latter. For now.

***  
The following days passed uneventfully. On the third day, Edith had to conclude that there was one disturbing change about the house—it was entirely devoid of ghosts.

There were no unnatural sounds, no screams or voices, no banging, or doors closing or opening unexpectedly.

The house was alive with dust and moths and old wood creaking under human feet but there was nothing else. The otherworldly beings had left this plane. But Edith knew that was impossible. Ghosts were tied to places and events, a no one shared a deeper connection this house and its previous inhabitants.

Edith spent hours walking the grounds around the estate until her shoes were soaked in red mud, and she was not shivering but convulsing from the cold, but there was nothing and no one, except the long stretch of the horizon on all sides shrouded by white fog.

She had also gone to visit Thomas and Lucille’s graves. They were buried side by side behind the house, marked by two unremarkable gravestones that already started sinking into the ground. Edith imagined that their bodies have began disintegrating into the clay and parts of them now flowed through the veins of the house.

Edith spent a lot of time in Thomas’ workshop. It remained the warmest and brightest room in the house. She would place an armchair next to the window and wait for grey daylight hours to run out.

But no one appeared to her. Except Alan who came in carrying two glasses of whiskey.

“I would make us tea, but I have a feeling you don’t want any.”

Edith smiled and took the glass gratefully from him. She’d discovered, no small thanks to Alan’s propensity for always nursing a glass, that whiskey did a rather fine job of warming her up.

***

Days stretched into weeks but the gloomy spring never came to an end. Edith felt it in her bones when it was foggy. She would see the fog in her dreams—white, endless, filled with echoes of people who left her, and when she awoke the world was painted in fog too.

She slept in the master bedroom, in the same bed. The sickening cold of the sheets was only too familiar to her.

Edith didn’t see much of Alan who occupied himself with his studies. Once, he’d attempted to fix the roof. But Thomas was proved right—it was utterly useless. The roof caved in a single crash of finality a few days after.

Though Edith did not see him, she knew where Alan was at all times. He’d started having coughing fits. It might have been the draft that made him sick or it could have been something more serious. Edith insisted that he visit the town doctor but he always refused, claiming that he was a doctor too. He said there was nothing seriously wrong with him and that the cough would pass in time.

Edith still spent most of her days in Thomas’ workshop. There was nothing to do but sit and read while there was light. At night, she made her and Alan dinner, and they ate in silence.

She could fathom her own silence, but she could not understand Alan’s devotion to her. Why would he not leave?

Over the spring, Edith left Crimson Peak only once. It was a trip to London to develop the photos she’d taken around the estate.

She peered at the photos of the empty grounds, of the red clay mine which had started to crumble due to disuse, of the various rooms in the house, but could not find a trace of a supernatural presence.

Once, she asked Alan if he had any ghostly encounters during his stay at Adderdale Hall.

It was a rare afternoon that Edith and Alan were spending together in the library. Edith was seated in front of the piano, trying to remember the etudes that her mother had taught her when Edith was a child.

“No, I haven’t,” he said, his voice almost drowned out by noise of the piano that was terribly out of tune. “Although…” he paused.

Edith’s hand hovered over keys for a few moments, and then she turned to look at Alan when he didn't continue.

“Yes?" She prompted.

“There are ghosts in this very room, hiding from the world.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alan. ‘Hiding’ implies fear and there is nothing that I fear anymore. Besides,” she said, looking down at her hands, pallid against the black sleeve of her dress, “Ghosts aren’t pale.”

“Tell me, what do ghosts look like?”

“They are loud. Skeletal. The color of fresh blood. Not pleasant, at all, really.”

Alan laughed until his laugh transformed into a coughing fit. Edith looked away because she didn’t know what to do with herself in those moments.

After his cough died out, he got up and walked over to stand by the window which faced west. Outside, the sun was going down in splendid blood orange colors.

Edith joined him, but instead of looking at the sunset, she looked at him.

She supposed that most women found Alan attractive. His cheekbones had become even more defined as of late. And he'd grown paler. He was becoming a true resident of Crimson Peak.

Edith couldn't stop herself from thinking about Thomas. His blue eyes were a shade darker than Alan's blue-grey, or so it seemed to her. She remembered the way Thomas looked at her, as though she was the only one who ever mattered, as though she was going to flutter away any moment and he wanted to keep her for a little longer. It had all been lies—his looks, his words, his touches, and whatever else remained that wasn't a lie, gave her little comfort now. 

She wished she was a good painter. Then she would make thousands of paintings of Thomas' face. And then perhaps, her mind would be set free from the whirlwind intensity of his eyes. 

But she couldn’t paint. She could only write.

***  
  
_“Let me do this,” Adam murmured. He then took the veil and reverently placed it over Eve’s face._

_“What is this?” Eve laughed but did not resist his gesture._

_“Badeken,” he replied, visibly confused by Eve’s lack of knowledge about the customs of a Jewish wedding._

_“But darling,” Eve said, trying and failing to contain her laughter.“You do know that you perform badeken only for the bride’s first marriage.”_

_“Ah,” Adam said, smiling, undeterred. “Well, this is our first Jewish wedding.”_

_“Hurry! We haven’t got much time,” the Rabbi yelled from the ceremony room next door._

_Adam took Eve’s hand, covered in cream colored silk gloves, and led the way._

***

“What are you writing?” Alan came up behind her, startling Edith. 

She was seated at the kitchen table. Summer did grace them with their presence after all but it mostly consisted of rain and humidity and they were still stuck inside, breathing in the muggy air that flowed in from the open windows and the kitchen door that led to a little veranda. 

“Nothing,” Edith said quickly and closed her journal, not wanting Alan to see a word of it. It was just an idea and the lack of writing over the past year had stripped away some of her confidence.

“I see,” Alan said, his disappointment all too obvious on his tired face. He walked over to the window and stared outside. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.

Edith felt a stab of guilt so strong it made her nauseated. She couldn't keep Alan a prisoner at Adderdale Hall forever. Even if he was a willing prisoner. 

“I’m writing a love story,” Edith said, her voice softening.

“A love story? That’s unusual for you.”

“Well, it’s still supernatural. You see, they’re vampyres,” Edith explained. “And they’re in love,” Edith finished uncertainly, twisting her hands on her lap. _Was this really going to work?_

“That’s sounds lovely,” Alan said, smiling.

“You really think so?”

“Yes,” Alan replied, his warm smile still lingering on his face.

“I’ll let you read it then,” Edith said, finding herself smiling as well. “Say, Alan, should we get married?”

Alan stared at her for some moments.

“Edith Sharpe, did you just propose to me?”

“Yes. Is it so surprising?”

“Quite so. A woman proposing to a man? Scandalous even,” Alan said, and came to stand next to her.

“More scandalous than a widow living in a house alone with the said man?” Edith laughed.

“You have a point, my dear,” Alan replied and went down on one knee in front of her. He took her hands into his own.

“But before you accept, there is a condition,” Edith said. “You must leave and seek treatment for you cough. And once you're better, you must come back to me."

“I accept. Could it be any other way?”

 _Yes_ , Edith thought but did not say. _It could be a thousand different ways, a thousand different ways I could be betrayed. But not by you._

And that had to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from The Mars Volta song The Widow. Huge thanks to K. for beta and thoughtful comments.


End file.
